The Roman Space Telescope Optical System: Status, Test, and Verification

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (“Roman”) was prioritized by the 2010 Decadal Survey in Astronomy & Astrophysics and is NASA’s next flagship observatory. Launching no earlier than 2026, Roman will explore the nature of dark energy, as well as expand the census of exoplanets in our galaxy via microlensing. Roman will also demonstrate key technology needed to image and spectrally characterize extra-solar planets. Roman’s large field of view, agile survey capabilities, and excellent stability enable these scientific objectives, yet present unique challenges for the design, test, and verification of its optical system. The Roman optical system comprises an optical telescope assembly (OTA) and two instruments: the primary science wide-field instrument (WFI) and a technology demonstration coronagraph instrument (CGI), and the instrument carrier (IC), which meters the OTA to each instrument. This paper presents a status of the optical system hardware as it begins integration and test (I&T), as well as describes key optical test, alignment, and verification activities as part of the I&T program.